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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER - NEWSLETTER 2009
What Will You Do This Christmas?
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Cal with SFC General
Manager Anthony |
Christmas is just about upon us. And what a wonderful season
of the year it is! An inexplicable
sense of joy and festivity seems to
pervade even those who do not believe
in the wonder of the coming of
the Christ through whom we have
received redemption, salvation, joy
in the Holy Spirit, and the daily
blessings and care of our loving
Lord. Of all people, we can say that “God has supplied all our needs according
to His riches in glory, by
Christ Jesus”.
Let us celebrate Jesus’ birth this year with joyful abandonment
and love for God and the whole world for which Christ died! Rejoice,
and be glad – if ever there was a day that the Lord has made –
it was the day the little baby named Jesus was born. What a difference
that Life has made in the world in these past 2000 years!! I
have often thought, “Where would I be had it not been for Christmas,
Easter and the promise of His soon return?”
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Zamba, Dinah and their family. |
Some very
good news:
Dinah, Zamba
Duku’s wife is now
totally cancer free!
Praise the Lord
Who heals!
But, I’m afraid for
Sudan over this
Christmas season.
Not because of any
possible attack
again from the Islamic
regime in Khartoum from the North. Not because of the fear of
the Savannah Farmers Cooperative becoming discouraged because
the bulldozers continue to break down. That can be expected since
we bought heavily used bulldozers. Instead of 10 new acres each
week from each bulldozer being cleared to provide fresh, rich soil to
plant, the machines sit idle too often – awaiting parts from 500
miles south in Kampala, Uganda.
What I am concerned about is the fact that too many millions
of people in southern Sudan have far less than adequate food to
carry them through this particularly hot and dry season of the year.
While we enjoy the snow, the sharp cold days and our well-stocked
pantries, they swelter in heat from 35 to 45 degrees Celsius. While North Americans on both sides of the border exchange gifts
hard to choose because we already have everything we need,
the largest percentage of the villages in southern Sudan simply
want to receive food. The horror of it all is that many will not
get even a candy, let alone adequate food. That troubles me.
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The Bori Warehouse
waiting for Harvest! |
In the Savannah Farmers Co-operative we are
doing our best. As
I write this, I have received
a report from
Zamba Duku, our volunteer
Managing Director,
that the warehouse
on the compound
of our Bori
farm is filled to the
roof and doors with a
bumper crop of maize
(corn). What we
thought was going to
be a drought-killed
crop was suddenly blessed with rain to finish out the full
growth of our largest field of corn ever. Zamba wrote the following
about it
Oct. 22/09“Anthony (General Manager) thinks we shall not
get anything less than fifty thousand kilograms at least.
(That’s just the Bori farm alone) Fiona (our Financial
Controller) is on her way from Morobo as I write. She will
be there at Bori until the maize is shelled, weighed and
stored. I will want her to sell soon after, and she says the
price at present is about one thousand Uganda shillings per
kilogram. She told me that Morobo expects eight metric tonnes
from the maize there, a huge crop from that small acreage!”
When the shelling of the cobs is finished, I expect it will be
much more than they projected. The people of Southern Sudan
are notoriously conservative
in estimating
anything until is
reaches the final
stages of processing – lest there be less
than they had hoped.
My great joy is that
a second crop is
now growing on all
the farms, and even better, we will be using the mechanical seed planters the next season in March which will plant many more seeds per acre than has been
done by hand thus far.
We have actually helped over 135 small farmers plough their small
acreages of from five to twenty-five acres. We have been thrilled to learn that
these small farmers together have grown far more than our projected 2,000 acre
farms have grown. That is a dramatic increase in food production. This has always
been one of our major goals – to
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Field of maize that was ploughed for a local farmer with SFC tractors |
bring the small farmers from subsistence to a
level where they can see farming as a profitable ‘business’. They now have great
confidence in the future.
The bad news is that Uganda has sealed its border and forbidden by
law that food be exported to Sudan. They have had their own drought problems.
We cannot blame them, but it does put great pressure on us to increase the production
of food within Sudan at a much more rapid pace.
Success always brings new challenges.
To increase food production we need several things immediately:
1) A NEW bulldozer for clearing land – one that will not continually be breaking
down.
2) Another small truck for hauling food from the fields.
3) A factory sized grinding mill for processing the corn (and other grains we grow)
into flour . {Late breaking good news: CBM has receiived a llarge
donattiion and work hass ssttartted on tthiiss wholle projjectt}}
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Fixing the bulldozer - again! |
4) The installation of a Fuel Depot on our own land to insure clean diesel directly from
the refinery in Kenya to be used by all our
tractors, trucks and vehicles. Too many fuel injectors have been spoiled by dirty, locally available diesel fuel.
5) Another complete farm staff to develop and manage the next 2,000 acre farm started on November 1st this year.
Please pray for Amos, that God will give great wisdom to this twenty-three year old manager. He has proven himself well on one of the
smaller farms and is being transferred to this larger challenge.
There is so much JOY to tell you about. At this point, all I can say is that, when these items are in place, these farms will become selfsustaining,
and will help hundreds of other small farmers get to a position of confident self-sustainability. Can you imagine the dignity
this returns to the lives of people who have been beaten, enslaved, marginalized and almost dehumanized by their northern rulers?
I can only ask that this Christmas you do something extraordinary
in helping Sudan reach its vision of plenty, and leave behind its dependency syndrome forever.
Yours very sincerely in Christ, for Sudan
p.s. Prayer Request! Zamba Duku reports that Dr. Samson Kwaje
(Sec. Treas. of SFC, and Minister of Agriculture) has been wounded in
the leg by an ambush. Three people in Dr. Samson's convoy were
killed and two of the convoy vehicles were burnt. Government troops
have been sent to the area to restore calm and Dr. Samson is reported
to be somewhere in Lainya county. I am trying to get in touch with the
Lainya Commissioner and will update you when I get further details.
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